I paid a visit to the local store to see SKS

I think also one has to be mindful of the adage if it sounds like it's too good to be true, it probably is.

I have seen some stores advertise "all matching" mint conditioned Russian SKSes..at a premium price

To the undiscriminating eye, it would appear as if one stumbled onto a goldmine, especially with the often stated "matching numbers" phrase whether retail or more likely, on private sales. I have seen very few, if any, which are truly factory matching numbers. Oftentimes if it is not ###XXed out numbers on the stock, you see the infamous small square with a slash mark on the dustcover indicating refurb. Or even if it is not ###ed out, you can tell that for certain years, the number on the stock was applied to a refinished stock, as it is missing the arsenal Tula star (for instance)...

What Russian models in retail stores nowadays are truly the bottom of the barrel stuff. Truly collector grade legit Russian SKSes will have to be purchased on the secondary market, and at (unfortunately) highly inflated prices.

Agreed that the French tickler Chinese ones were the best current way to obtain a superb condition SKS, but they are Chinese, not Russian.
 
I bought some really awful Chinese SKSs from Tenda a few years ago. I did what the dealers are doing today - put them in tapco stocks and sold them. You can basically expect that all of those are, while working, not the cream of the crop.
 
cornelunc said:
That is my question: if imports from Russia was banned in 2014 where did they get them today?
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I thought i remember reading something about them coming through other countries instead of direct from russia to get around the import bans. Company X buys them from russia and then sells them to company Y who then sells to the importers bringing them to us.
 
dand883 said:
I thought i remember reading something about them coming through other countries instead of direct from russia to get around the import bans. Company X buys them from russia and then sells them to company Y who then sells to the importers bringing them to us.
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OMG! That would be sanctions busting. Don't need Poly hyperventilating about that too!

Where does any commodity come from? Somewhere where they are for sale. The movie Lords of War with Nick Cage showed that.

Royal Tiger Imports in the US is sorting through pallets and shipping cubes of everything the Ethiopians had in some arsenal somewhere. International Military Imports bought a castle tower filled with 1800s era blackpowder cartridge rifles, etc. Canada does not keep its old guns anymore, but in the past, it sold off No.4s by the 45-gal drum. The US Civilian Marksmanship Program receives US military aid that is returned from whoever.
 
dand883 said:
I thought i remember reading something about them coming through other countries instead of direct from russia to get around the import bans. Company X buys them from russia and then sells them to company Y who then sells to the importers bringing them to us.
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That's far away from reality. Here are bullet-points to get back to it:
- no, even in 2025 with full scale war waging between invading Russia and Ukraine we don't have full scale sanctions, only specific people and specific companies are sanctioned and it started in 2014 when the war started. Today you're free to deal with ANY entity in Russia that is not listed on the sanction list and sells, you guess what - ammo and guns. There's only one peculiarity since 2022 - you most likely won't get approve on military-related items to be imported
- since like forever Russia had an official policy that PROHIBITS export of military surplus for commercial purposes. But they donate them for free to spread "russian world" (use to be "liberation of proletarians"). Yes, PROHIBITS. How do we get then SKSs, MN snipers, and TT-33 from Russia then, one might wonder. Well, one might thank Russian corruption. They applied "sporting firearm" markings on the before mentioned items and voila - we had these thing with tons of ugly markings here in Canada.
- what about those without export markings? Ah, here we arrived to the biggest part of USSR surplus items (SKS, SVT-40, TT-33, MN regular rifles, MN snipers, etc) - they came from Ukraine that inherited tons of those. Ukraine doesn't have any requirements for export markings and Canada has none for import - and this is the top of the cream we got from.
- Also worth mentioning that there were USSR items coming from Belorus', Bulgaria, Romania, Albania and other countries.

So, bottom line, there were no secret ways around sanctions, which are a joke in the first place.
 
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